


The Balance of the Blade

by Isis



Category: Mark of the Horse Lord - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2012-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 12:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not the same blade; yet it is still a good weapon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Balance of the Blade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UrsulaKohl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/gifts).



> Thanks to Carmarthen for beta - and for sneakily writing me a sequel!

"The Caledonian spy brought a gift," said Phaedrus the next day, after Brys had left the King's Place and he and Conory were alone. Shan had uncurled herself from Conory's shoulders and staked out a place by the fire on the softest rug to dry the dampness from her fur.

"Aye," said Conory. "The gift of your triumph over Gault. That was well done." He set the gaming board and the carved box containing the amber and ivory pieces on the low table and squatted beside it. "Is it really that you wish to lose again at Fox and Geese?"

"It is in my mind that the King should become a better player."

"It is in my mind that the King is already an accomplished player." Conory raised an eyebrow, and Phaedrus knew he did not mean the game he had brought. 

He sighed and turned to poke at the fire, for something to do while he spoke. "I don't want the others to know, but I wanted to tell you. He brought poison from Liadhan, for Murna to give me."

Conory nodded thoughtfully. He opened the box but did not remove the game pieces. "And yet you are still alive."

"Do you know what she said to me? 'You have changed in seven years.' She said that Midir would have let Gault have his burning." 

"We all of us change over seven years."

"That is what I said to her. But I don't know that she believed me. She does not like me much." He lowered himself to the floor next to Conory. "She did not like who I was then, and she does not trust who I am now. She doesn't want to be married to me any more than I want to be married to her."

"You know well it is not a question of wanting."

"I know." He turned to look at Conory: at his hair bleached pale, his crystal ear-drops; his odd-set eyes under arched brows. They had been speaking quietly, and Phaedrus could see nobody at the door. Still, he dropped his voice almost to a whisper. "I am sorry, Conory."

"Sorry!" Those eyes narrowed. "For what?"

"That I am not – who you expected," said Phaedrus quietly.

"I did not know what to expect," said Conory, but his voice was guarded, and it made something twist in Phaedrus' heart. For seven years Conory had lived with the loss of his heart-companion. Phaedrus could not blame him that he had hoped for his old friend back.

Phaedrus stood and went to the cupboard to fetch a jug of watered wine and two cups. If he was going to talk to Conory about this, they would need wine. But after he had returned to the fireside and poured the wine, he was still reluctant to speak. Conory seemed to sense this, and drank from his cup in silence, watching the fire and stroking Shan's soft fur.

"Midir had no pity in him," he finally said, remembering what he had thought when Gault had brought them together, and Conory looked up sharply and meaningfully at the doorway; but there was nobody there but the two of them, and Phaedrus lifted his chin and looked steadily at him.

Finally, Conory nodded, almost imperceptibly. "It is useful when you are to be King in this country to have a heart hardened against your enemies."

"Murna should not have been his enemy."

"You think not?"

"He would have had no more choice than I did. And he would have done what was needed, though his heart might lie elsewhere."

"Oh, he told you where his heart lay," Conory said lightly. "That is more than he did with most."

"He did not need to." Phaedrus poured them both a little more wine and squatted again by the fire. He did not want to look at Conory. "He had to teach me everyone, all of his kinsmen and his friends, what they looked like, what they were to him. He had to tell me his stories of growing up here. And in doing so he showed me who he was, and what he was to others, and it was as though …" He found it hard to say in words. "It was as though he molded me into his own image, and so it was not just what he said that was important." Finally he looked up, into Conory's odd eyes. "I became who he was, and so I understood what was in the spaces where he said nothing."

"I do not think you understand at all," said Conory. There was an odd bitterness in his voice that Phaedrus had not heard before, and a sadness, too. "We were boys together, playing in the green forests and on the rocky shore, making our own world. Together we grew to the threshold of manhood, and I'll not forgive Liadhan for taking him away then."

Maybe so, thought Phaedrus. Midir had loved Conory. It was clear from the way he spun his tales of their boyhood and from the fond smile in his voice; most of all, it was in the spaces left between the stories. It was something he had never said, and yet it was in every word he spoke. "Perhaps," he said. "But the King does not have the luxury of his own world, no matter where his heart lies."

"And where does _your_ heart lie?" Conory shot back.

"With the Dalriadain, of course. As does his, or he would not have been a part of this." It was clear that Midir must still care a great deal for his people, to bear the hurt of giving his name and his honor to another. And yet there was Conory. He should have his chance at happiness. "The city where he is living now is called Eburacum. It is three days' ride south of the Wall."

Conory shrugged, a lazy, fluid motion that set his ear-drops swinging. "That is far away, and I have things to do here."

"I would not lose you soon," Phaedrus said, and he thought of how it had been on the night of the King Slaying, back to back with Conory, fighting for their lives before the High Place. "But when this is all over, perhaps you might go."

"It will never be all over. Not even if we kill the She-Wolf; the Caledones will simply find another excuse. It is our way against their way, our people against their people, fighting for the same hunting runs and the same hearth-fires."

He knew Conory spoke truth. The King did not have the luxury of his own world, and neither did his Captain; not while the enemies of their people lived. It would never be all over, and he should not have needed Conory to tell him this. It made a mockery of his claim that he had become Midir. He bowed his head, somewhat ashamed.

"Sa sa, you are right. And so again I say I am sorry that you could not have the world you dreamed of as boys."

"It is a good enough world for me."

Phaedrus looked up and met Conory's eyes; and again he felt that strong current between them, as he had when they had embraced each other in the great cliff cave where he was presented to the Dalriadain as Midir. It was warming and more than a little unsettling. He lifted his cup to his lips, and found that it was empty. 

"I am glad of it. I don't know what I would do without you here to fight by my side," he said, putting the cup back down on the low table.

"She was right, you know," said Conory. "Midir has changed in seven years."

Phaedrus smiled wryly. "The balance of the blade is wrong."

"It is not the same blade, no. But it is still a good weapon." 

Bleakly he supposed that was what he was to Conory and the Companions: a weapon they had used to fight Liadhan, a weapon they would wield against the Caledones. Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face, for Conory put his own cup down and reached his arm around him. "Na, it is not only as that what you are to me. Did we not swear friendship in the forest, when you bound my arm?"

Conory's arm was warm and strong across his shoulders, and for a moment Phaedrus wondered if this was how it must be like for Conory to have Shan curled around his neck; a warm and reassuring weight. But it made him shift on his heels and overbalance, and suddenly he was falling against Conory's chest, toppling them both over onto the furs before the fire. Shan made a noise halfway between a hiss and a yowl and uncoiled from her spot by the fire, arching her back and stalking towards them.

"Easy, easy, little one! It is all right, I am not being attacked!" Conory said, smiling and reaching a hand toward her. Phaedrus worried for a moment she might claw him – her eyes held a distinctly unfriendly expression – but she only hissed at them again, then butted a few times against Conory's outstretched hand before settling back in her place.

"So this is how you treat your friends," Phaedrus laughed. "Knocking them off their feet!" He did not hurry to get up, though; it was comfortable lying against Conory on the floor.

Conory's hand tightened around his upper arm, and his breath was warm in his ear. "Only for certain of my friends. For Midir. And for you." 

Hair brushed softly against his jawline; lips touched his neck. The hand that had petted Shan now moved to pet him, stroking his shoulder and his chest. Slowly Phaedrus exhaled. He was aware of Conory's steady breathing, the rise and fall of the chest pressed against his back, the tension and strength in Conory's body.

"It may be that the Queen does not like you much," murmured Conory in his ear. "But if the King wishes it, he need not have a cold and empty bed."

There was a part of Phaedrus that wanted nothing more than to lean back and take what had been offered. To tilt his head and accept Conory's kisses; to give himself over to those stroking hands, and take his pleasure from them, and to give pleasure to Conory in turn.

He did not himself fully understand this impulse, for he had never been inclined to the caresses of men. Maybe it was that Conory seemed as something between men and women, with his cinched waist and beaded bracelets. Maybe it was that in the sharing of Midir's blood and memories something of Midir's heart had been shared as well. It had not been a lie, what he had told Conory, that in some way he had become Midir; that part of him saw Conory as Midir had known him, and that part desired him. He could not deny his body's arousal, nor the sudden tug in his heart.

Of course it was Midir who Conory desired in return, the Midir of his memories. It was only that he looked like Midir, he thought; that would make it easier to say no. 

But then Conory's lips at his ear breathed his name, his old name: "Phaedrus," he whispered, and a shudder went through him; he closed his eyes and sank back into Conory's arms for a moment. Conory cared for him – Conory wanted him – and Murna did not.

And yet when Murna had kissed him there had been something there, something real; something which might be built upon, if he could only catch and hold it. She had no love for Midir, and she did not know Phaedrus. But he was now neither one nor the other but something else formed from the two halves. 

Midir would have taken Murna to wife, as he would have been required, but he would have been even less happy than Phaedrus himself was. And she would have known his discontent, and been as unhappy as she was now; perhaps more so. If only he could break through to the Murna hidden under that cold mask, the Murna he had seen so briefly. Midir would not have cared whether he did or not. For himself Phaedrus felt that if ever he could reach her, maybe they both would gain something neither would have had, if it had been Midir here instead.

But it was not something he could do if he became as Midir in this; if he gave his heart to Conory in this way, there would be no room for Murna. And did not the Dalriadain deserve a King and Queen whose marriage was not a hollow husk?

With a pang of regret, he pulled himself away from Conory's caresses and sat himself up. "It is not," he said carefully, "a question of wanting."

Conory's eyes became shuttered and blank, as though he had stepped back behind his face to hide behind his own mask. "Ah." Then his gaze traveled down Phaedrus' body, and his lips quirked into his usual mocking smile. "No, I can see that."

"It is only that I still hope that – that she might find the new blade better suited for her hand than was the old."

Conory nodded. "It is in my heart that she will, though it may take time." 

And that was a door closed, thought Phaedrus; he wondered what it had cost Conory to make the offer, and to take it back. "And I hope that you will find one that suits you."

"I am content here," said Conory lightly. "As I said, I stand with my friends."

"I am glad, for I would rather you stand with me than against me," said Phaedrus.

"Oh, I will, when it matters. But now I shall take part against you." Conory laughed at Phaedrus' look of dismay. "Have you forgotten our game?"

"I had," admitted Phaedrus with a smile. He reached for the box of game-pieces.

They played three games, and Conory won them all.


End file.
